


It's Always the Gardener (Unless it's the Butler)

by Dodoa



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Der Mörder ist immer der Gärtner, Gen, Nightmares, Outtake, dream - Freeform, slightly cracky towards the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodoa/pseuds/Dodoa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade's office is full of vultures, Mycroft <strike>has Sherlocks best interests in mind</strike>, and John is far too calm. </p>
<p>Sherlock has a nightmare and John talks him out of it. Sherlock's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Always the Gardener (Unless it's the Butler)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Best Laid Plans](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4544349) by [Dodoa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodoa/pseuds/Dodoa). 



> This is an outtake from the latest chapter of my WIP 'The Best Laid Plans', but you absolutely don't have to read that to enjoy this little one-shot. Just a bit of background you probably don't even need: This is set during the hiatus, but John knows Sherlock is alive and they meet up a few times. This happens after Sherlock is injured on a mission where he also killed someone for the first time.
> 
> I wrote this very late last night, just because I felt like it, but I actually really like how it turned out. So enjoy.

It’s a rare sunny day in London, too sunny in fact if you asked the consulting detective currently standing in Lestrade’s office and berating the officers. It was too sunny for his armour. No coat, no suit jacket, no protection. He felt exposed. Vulnerable. There were vultures everywhere. Not figurative vultures, real ones. They were sitting on the tables and circling the lamps hanging from the ceiling, waiting for him to drop dead.

“The timeline doesn’t fit, there’s no way a lawn mower can fly that fast, and if he didn’t use it then how did the cooks lawn get mowed? Have you even considered that for a second?” Everyone around him was so stupid it physically hurt.

“Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to come in here and destroy our perfectly lovely theories with logic? Have some respect!” Anderson griped.

“Yes, who cares about facts anyway?” Donovan joined in. “Everyone knows that they don’t matter! You just use them to bully us.”

“Stop abusing the truth to further your own agenda! It’s indecent! We don’t need the truth, we just want a good story.” Kitty Riley added.

They were circling him, creating a cage of fear and loathing in the face of truth, logic and facts.

Sherlock desperately looked to Lestrade, who was sitting in his chair, feet on his desk, flipping through a file. He didn’t look up.

“If our theory is no good,” Donovan drawled as she walked past.

“Why don’t you tell us what really happened,” Anderson sneered, tightening the circle.

“How did you kill them Sherlock?” Kitty shoved a microphone in his face.

Of course that was when Lestrade finally looked up from his file. “Now that I’m interested in,” he stated expectantly.

“It was self defence!” Sherlock cried. How did they even know about that?

“I’ve always said it, the freak is a murderer!” Donovan whispered to his left.

“It was only a matter of time really.” Anderson whispered to his right.

They were crowding him, not giving him enough space to move, to breathe, to think.

“Did you enjoy it?” Kitty whispered, eyes wide with excitement at the juicy story. Headlines were hovering behind her, one more sensational than the last.

**FREAK FINALLY SNAPPED**

**PSYCHOPATH AT BAKER STREET**

**WHO WILL BE NEXT**

“No,” he vowed

“We know you, you never do anything you don’t enjoy,” Sebastian joined in. More and more people were converging on him taking his space, taking his air.

“Please stop, I swear I didn’t mean to!” Sherlock begged.

“Stop!” a command rang out.

Mycroft was sitting behind Lestrade‘s desk.

Everyone dissipated, muttering unpleasantries and shoving him, when they passed.

“Well if you didn’t commit murder, you won’t mind if we read your brain, do you?” Mycroft asked in that fake sweet voice of his, meaning that he knew very well that Sherlock did in fact mind, but was powerless to stop him.

you don’t mind if I have your pudding, do you;   
you don’t mind if I spend the whole week on my phone, talking to important people, do you;  
you don’t mind if I don’t come home at all this year, do you

“Nonononono don’t,” Sherlock begged, it was his brain and his thoughts and he didn’t want someone rooting through them, dissecting them, judging them. It didn’t matter if he was guilty or not.

But Mycroft had already lifted an imperious arm, light streaming from his palm.

“I didn’t do it!” Sherlock screamed, in a last attempt to stop his brother.

Mycroft’s hand moved closer and closer to Sherlock’s face.

Sherlock grabbed it in an effort to ward it off but the hand didn’t budge.

“Stop it,” he cried desperately, but the hand didn’t even hesitate

“It’s for your own good Sherlock,” Mycroft smiled at him ~~benevolently~~ malevolently.

Sherlock was sobbing now: “Help, anyone please help.”

The hand clamped over his eyes flooding his brain with light and pain.

 

Sherlock was running, pursuers close behind. Around him forest, he’d left the path to evade the trap they had been chasing him towards. He knew this, he knew how it ended. It ended with a fall. It ended with two dead bodies, a sprained ankle, two stab wounds and a concussion. He kept running.

“Sherlock!” John’s voice. What was John doing here? He was supposed to be safe at home.

Again: “Sherlock!”

The pursuers stopped coming after him and followed John’s voice instead.

Panic shot through Sherlock. John doesn’t stop calling for him.

“What are you doing? That’s not what’s supposed to happen! I’m the one you want!” he calls after them futilely, before taking off after them, but they reach their destination before Sherlock does.

“John!” he screams, trying to warn him, but it’s too late. They grab John before he can react or Sherlock can reach them. There’s a knife to the doctors throat.

“No” Sherlock, whispers stopping dead in his tracks.

“Let him go, he has nothing to do with this,” he tries to negotiate. “Please take me instead, I know things, I can give you all the information you want!”

The man holding the knife presses a little harder, drawing blood.

“No please,” Sherlock is begging again.

“Hey Sherlock it’s alright,” John tries to calm him down as if there wasn’t a knife at his throat. As if he wasn’t a twitch of a hand away from choking on his own blood. “You’re fine, you’re safe,” John continues. As if that mattered! Sherlock didn’t give a damn about his own safety as long as John was fine. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Sherlock.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Sherlock shouts.

“Then use this,” John answers. “Everything will be fine.”

What did John mean with _this_? Sherlock looks down at his hands and finds John’s gun. The men holding John hostage haven’t noticed it yet, and Sherlock uses it before they can.

First the one holding the knife. Then the other one. Then he runs. John follows, still telling him that everything will be fine. That’s good to know, but he isn’t sure if he believes it yet.

Sherlock runs.

Sherlock is caught.

Faceless agents, Mycroft’s or Moriarty’s, he can’t tell, converge on him and drag him away to John’s ceaseless reassurances.

They take him back to Lestrade’s office, that is now located in a cellar that Sherlock knows all too well. It belongs to Moriarty’s network.

He knows John is still with him because he can still hear his voice, trying to calm him.

Lestrade and his team see nothing amiss about their location, they don’t even seem to hear John.

They are all blind. Blind and stupid.

They don’t know that this is a trap.

Sherlock wants to warn John, but someone is hiding in the shadows behind him and Sherlock doesn’t want to alert them in case they can’t hear John talking, like everyone else.

But when John enters the room Sherlock can’t stop himself: ”Stay away from me.”

But John doesn’t listen. “It’s okay,” he whispers.

“John stop!” Sherlock tries to order him, but he walks closer to Sherlock, closer to the shadows, saying: “I’m here, don’t be scared.”

The shadows move and morph into Mary. John doesn’t see, he’s still talking: “You’re safe here.”

Blind like all the others.

“John! Watch out!”

Too late.

John doesn’t have a gun.

Mary fires.

John falls.

Mary vanishes.

“Nononono.” Sherlock falls to his knees beside his friend. “Please John, you have to stay with me, don’t go, I need you,” Sherlock pleads.

John is still whispering reassurances.

“I’m not leaving, it’s alright, you’re safe now...” his voice is far too calm for someone bleeding out as fast as he is.

There is nothing Sherlock can do.

John dies.

Sherlock can still hear him whispering.

Sherlock doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting on the floor cradling John’s cold body to him thinking: _If I can just warm him up, everything will be alright._ John’s voice is still telling him it will be, after all.

Someone touches his arm.

Sherlock doesn’t move.

If he stops looking at John, he might disappear into thin air. Not might. Will. He is sure of it.

“It’s just a dream,” John’s voice says.

Sherlock looks up.

John is alive and looking down at him with a bemused expression.

But if John is alive then who...?

Sherlock risks a quick glance away from alive John to dead John.

It’s not John at all. The body is quite clearly wearing a mask and a wig. How could he have missed that?

Lying dead in Sherlock’s lap is Moriarty.

“Oh I love your brain, Sherlock! Such a quaint little place, it’s so relaxing,” Mycroft saunters in, swinging his umbrella, “but we should be going.”

 

Mycroft takes his hand away from Sherlock’s eyes, asking: “Now was that so hard?” They are back in Lestrade’s real office. The vultures, both literal and figurative, have left.

“Yes,” Sherlock sulks.

“Well, now that that is cleared up, have fun with your little murder.” Mycroft leaves.

Lestrade is back in his chair.

“Now that we established that I didn’t do it, can we get back to real theories?” Sherlock demands.

“It was the gardener, we figured that out hours ago,” Lestrade brags. Everyone seems to agree with him, even John is looking like he’s considering the theory, when it couldn’t be more obvious that it’s wrong.

“It’s not the gardener. He wasn’t even there that night,” Sherlock exclaims. Seriously the man had a completely watertight alibi, he’d even been caught on CCTV.

“But it’s always the gardener,” Lestrade claims. Anderson and Donovan nod along with him, but John is starting to look a bit sceptical. At least one of them who isn’t a complete moron.

“No, idiots. You always _think_ it’s the gardener, but I’ve proven time and time again that it’s not!”

“So who is it then if not the gardener?” Anderson enquires nastily, like he thinks there is no way Sherlock could have a better solution. Well he’s about to be proven wrong.

“The butler, obviously. In contrast to the gardener he actually has a motive and no alibi. He was free until one, and he claims that he was at the local pub, but no one actually saw him there after he went out for a smoke at half past eleven. And his work clothes were still drying after the wash when we arrived on the scene even though laundry day is Thursday,” he explains to their vacant faces.

“But the gardener had access to all kinds of poison!” Anderson tries valiantly and uselessly to defend their theory.

“You’re so wrong, I can’t even begin to dissemble your logic! It has to be the butler, John tell them how wrong they are!” Sherlock begs. This is getting unbearable, why can’t they just learn that he will always be right in these arguments? Why do they have to question him every time?

“Well it starts with the fact that the Sir Henry wasn’t poisoned, but stabbed,” John starts him off. Not the strongest argument, the gardener could still have used the hedge shears, but at least John saw through Anderson’s latest stupidity.

“Thank you John. And in the night in question the gardener was having a passionate affair with the cook, which is why he was late to work that day. The story was corroborated by both the cook and CCTV evidence,” Sherlock finished with the rest of his evidence.

Lestrade was starting to look thoughtful, turning what Sherlock had said over in his head for a bit, before his features cleared up in understanding: “Oh, now I get it! It isn’t always the gardener. The murderer is always the butler!”

Sherlock wanted to scream at the sheer stupidity of the statement, but he settled for dragging John out of the office, before he could infect himself with that strain of idiocy.

His normal brand of idiocy was already enough, thank you very much.

**Author's Note:**

> The bit at the end is inspired by a well known German song: "Der Mörder ist immer der Gärtner" (The murderer is always the gardener) by Reinhard Mey. Each verse depicts a murder and in the refrain the gardener is blamed, until the last verse where the gardener is killed by the butler (or the cook in some live versions), it's a pretty funny song.


End file.
